Bacon By Freud

Lucian Freud first met Francis Bacon in 1945. He had heard about this mysterious and distinctive artist from Graham Sutherland.Within a short time, Sutherland had arranged for both artists to join him for a weekend at his home in the country, and they met at the station on the way there.‘Once I met him I saw him a lot,’ Freud said. Freud and Bacon soon enjoyed an intense and productive friendship, seeing each other on a daily basis, it was only natural that each would begin to feature in the other’s pictures, Freud appearing in Bacon’s oils for the first time in 1951 and Bacon appearing in three drawings by Freud executed in 1951, two paintings of 1952 and 1956–57 and a later drawing from 1970.

When Bacon first painted Freud in 1951, Freud actually sat for Bacon, who usually preferred to work from secondary media such as photographs. On his return to the studio after this first sitting, Freud recognised that, in his absence, the work had completely changed – it now resembled closely a snapshot of Kafka that Bacon had in his studio. When Bacon sat for Freud in 1952, that portrait was painted in three months – Bacon apparently, ‘grumbled but sat consistently’. They sat knee to knee, Bacon looking downwards, his head filling the small copper plate. Intriguingly, this downward gaze is prefigured in Freud’s 1951 drawing, implying that this contemplative pose was a continuous characteristic of Bacon’s. Freud’s famous oil portrait of Bacon was in the collection of the Tate until it was stolen in 1988 from an exhibition in Berlin; its whereabouts remain unknown. Left unfinished on account of its sitter suddenly leaving, probably to pursue his lover Peter Lacy in Tangier, Francis Bacon 1956–57 is now – in addition to the four drawings – the only remaining portrait of Bacon. A number of other portraits of Bacon were, at one time or another, attempted, but although started they always resulted in fa i lu re and we re later destroyed by Freud. Freud himself, on the other hand, was often the subject of Bacon’s work throughout the years.

Until 1954, it was Freud’s practise to paint while sitting down.This year marked a significant turning point in his career: now he not only began to work in a more expansive way and while standing, but he also abandoned his use of sable brushes in favour of coarse, thicker hogs-hair brushes that amplified his touch and made the paint freer. Bacon played an instrumental role in these changes in Freud’s working practise. Their friendship had a profound effect on Freud, both personal and artistic. Bacon lived life on the brink, he courted risk. He was producing works that were violent explosive and fuelled by hazard; he talked about ‘packing a lot of things into one single brushstroke, which amused and excited me, and I realised that was a million miles from anything I could ever do’. Freud, losing patience with his own methods, pushed himself accordingly. We can see the effect this had on his work in Francis Bacon, where he has disregarded lines in favour of planes and volumes, liberating the paint, creating a more worked complexion, more seasoned and full of life.

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